Obama is expected to nominate former Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald for the post. McDonald has a long military history — he’s a West Point grad and former Army Ranger — as well as having a lot of leadership experience with large, complex organizations. He became just the twelfth CEO at P&G in 2009 and left last year. He’s also the leader of the Cultural Facilities Task Force, which has been working to find ways to preserve both Union Terminal and Music Hall.

Despite his impressive resume, McDonald has his work cut out for him. The VA has recently faced a number of charges of mismanagement stemming from botched record keeping and long wait times for care, which critics say have resulted in the deaths of patients.

• In what has to be the biggest national news of the day, the Supreme Court ruled
that employers can refuse to offer birth control as part of their
insurance packages for religious reasons. The case involves the Hobby
Lobby corporation, which refuses to offer contraceptives due to the
Christian beliefs of the corporation’s founders. Some polls show
that many Americans believe corporations shouldn't be allowed to decide
what kinds of items are offered via health insurance, though pro-life
groups are applauding the ruling.

The decision split the court 5 to 4, with all five in the majority men.

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If you're completely befuddled and saddened by the ruling, take heart from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion, which truly breathes hot fire. In it, she points out that some forms of contraception can cost a month's wages for minimum wage employees, that the court's ruling opens up a huge grey area about what can and can't be decided by corporations in terms of health care. She also warns that the court has "ventured into a minefield."

• I ride a bike to work so I don’t have to deal with traffic and roads being closed and whatnot. This usually works out great and I get to zip past all the chumps sitting in their idling cars. (Sorry if you drive to work. You’re not really a chump. I just hate driving and am really impatient in the mornings.) Except today. Twelfth and Race is shut down for streetcar work, throwing a serious obstacle in the route I and a lot of other people take. It’s going to be closed for the next six weeks. Also closed for the short-term: 12th and Clay, but that should be back in action Wednesday. Let’s just keep reminding ourselves that this is a sign that progress is happening, and that it’s a good thing. In the meantime, I need to figure out how to build that zip line I’ve been planning from my house to CityBeat’s office.

• The Enquirer today has a piece about “boomerang” residents — folks who move away to big metropolises but come back to the Queen City. As one of those folks myself, I feel fairly certain most people move back for the same reasons I did: easy access to Skyline and Putz’s blue soft serve ice cream. Mystery solved.

• An area man is about to go on trial. In North Korea. Jeffery Edward Fowle of Miamisburg visited the isolated totalitarian country in April and has been detained ever since for “hostile acts” against the state. Rumor has it he made disparaging remarks about North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un’s best friend Dennis Rodman and his rebounding skills.

• The Ohio State University welcomes its new president today. Michael Drake will be the school’s 15th head and the first African American to take the post. Drake was previously chancellor of University of California Irvine.

• ISIS, the brutal insurgent group of militants who have taken over a large swath of Iraq and some of Syria, have declared themselves a religious state governing the territory they’ve captured. That declaration is a challenge to the U.S.-supported Iraqi government's sovereignty and a new level of trouble for the already chaotic country. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is making moves to take back some ground they’ve lost to ISIS, and Iran has pledged to fight the group as well, suggesting no end on the horizon for the bloody conflict.

* Finally, Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar has been dead for two decades, but Smithsonian reports his legacy lives on in the form of the country's hippo infestation. That's gangster.